Cool, thanks. No big explosions of any sort yet. I will check the manual to see what it says about timing, and my next thought is compression. Might have to borrow the FIL's tiller in the mean time...summer isn't going to wait on me.

or look and see how close the magnet is to the coil when you rotate it to near TDC... eyeballing it is OK for these purposes...

The standard rule is to use a paper matchbook cover between the coil pickup and the flywheel - something like 0.017". Just rotate the flywheel slowly when done to be sure you don't have any metal-to-metal contact.

or look and see how close the magnet is to the coil when you rotate it to near TDC... eyeballing it is OK for these purposes...

The standard rule is to use a paper matchbook cover between the coil pickup and the flywheel - something like 0.017". Just rotate the flywheel slowly when done to be sure you don't have any metal-to-metal contact.

yes great way to check the gap, I was saying how close it gets to the coil when it comes around, like if the key were sheared to the point that it won't even try to fire it'd be totally misalighned

Thanks Kurt, the magnet is passing the pickup right before tdc. Gap is somewhere around .03 and should be .02 but I see no way to adjust and I'm getting spark. Pulled head and valves are operating ok. Back to carb?